The public response of many in the indian-american community (1st and 2nd generation) to this case has exposed their almost comic willingness to support and justify anything that comes out of the mouth of a white person in a suit. Who knew there were so many brown house n***ers, gungadins and sepoys?

Note: Gungadins and sepoys are similar but not identical to house slaves. A gungadin is somebody who is servile to anyone with a white skin under the expectation that doing so will somehow get him a vaguely promised reward or acceptance as an equal in the distant future. A sepoy on the other hand is just a mercenary who will abuse people who look like him to get paid by somebody with a white skin. The biggest gungadin (or more likely a sepoy) in this case might be the DA, Preet Bharara, himself. However we shall ignore him for the rest of this post and concentrate on some of the recent articles and opinion pieces posted by people of Indian descent in supposedly “respectable” western newspapers.

Yet here’s the point most in India are missing: Khobragade isn’t the victim here, her maid is. Not one Indian politician, not one Indian media station highlighted the real story about paying your domestic help a mere $3.31 an hour (in a country where the minimum wage is $7.25 and the diplomat stated on official documents that she would pay the maid about $9.75 an hour).

What about the condition and pay of domestic help for consular staff of certain middle-eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia? Is he seriously trying to imply that the consulates and embassies of all other countries treat their domestic help any better? What about all those rich people in the UK or USA who routinely use illegal and underpaid nannies? Why are they not being prosecuted? What about all those upper middle-class professionals in California who employ “illegal” central american nannies and house help? Moving on..

Notwithstanding legitimate Indian concerns about whether American marshals used correct protocol in the way they treated a diplomat, the truth is that India is party to an exploitative system that needs to be scrutinized.

But what about scrutinizing all those white american families using “illegal” mexican labor and nannies? What about investigating the rich white people in NYC who do the same thing. Isn’t it odd that this coolie is also fixated on the behaviors of a visible minority while overlooking those very same behaviors in the majority. Is she seriously suggesting that the 10-20 million “illegal” mexican immigrants in the USA today are treated as well as whites? Is she suggesting that a country acquired by genocide and built upon the labor of slaves and exploited immigrants has any moral standing to lecture others about paying their maids?

India’s reaction is disappointing. The anti-corruption party in India is gaining incredible momentum — the party even unseated the ruling Congress party in the country’s capital, which was a huge victory. So why are Indians rallying for a privileged treatment of a diplomat? Why shouldn’t she be treated as a common criminal? In India, someone with power would rarely be apprehended for paying a servant a low wage. Actually, it’s laughable to think such a charge would even take place. But there was hope that a movement against corruption would change things.

Has even one major member of the Bush43 administration whose lie-based invasion of Iraq actions resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis been prosecuted? Why not? Have any of the major players responsible for the 2008 economic crisis been jailed? Why not? How many bigwigs at large pharma companies have been jailed for the sale of useless, toxic and or sub-standard drugs in the USA? Why not.. especially since many of these frauds caused a lot of unnecessary deaths? Vioxx anyone? Remember that fungus-tainted steroid injection scandal that killed over 50 people a year or two ago? A country that has no appetite to prosecute, let alone jail, its rich and powerful has no business telling others to do so.

Do these house slaves, gungadins and sepoys still live in a world where people in other countries are not aware of ground realities in the USA? I guess they either do believe that or are cynical enough to pretend that it is so for their older white employers.

I don’t really understand the post. As a high- ranking official she should have known she would be under scrutiny. Countries hostile to India would probably make a fuss if she wasn’t prosecuted.

Asking for Bush to be prosecuted- This is never going up happen.

I’m not really getting it, but I’m assuming you are condemning the Indian- American news people for supporting the prosecution of a diplomat who ripped off her maid, because white people have committed crimes and not been caught? White politicians get busted for shit all the time. Usually when an enemy gets a hold of some info. Are Indian- Americans suppose to demand to be treated as above the law?

While there is a certain amount of hypocrisy, the US elite’s domestic help is only underpaid, not starved out of pure meanness. It’s disgusting that the entire Indian nation of groveling rubes are outraged over the treatment of this princess bitch.

No. There’s a disgusting kind of leftoid confusion that is being revealed here.
During the sixties, left-wing students thought that the oppressed workers would fall in line behind their protest movement. Didn’t happen. But what’s the ongoing assumption? That the oppressed workers are apparently to stupid to know their own reality and too cowed to stand up for themselves.
In the same way that Bush thought the Iraqis would be grateful when “we” came to rescue them for democracy, “heroic” people idealize the victims of discrimination (all the poor brown people of the world) and hold them to a higher standard of ethics and mutual solidarity than the oppressors themeselves. Of course Indians will react first and foremost to the insensitive and undiplomatic way that this was brought into pulbic view, and this supplants entirely the ethics of the underlying case at hand. Which is a trivial case of abuse of privilege towards another person, trivial not because it doesn’t matter, but trivial in comparison to the bigger picture, in the same way that ripping off a store for $20 will get you jail time, but ripping of $20 billion that causes infinitely more social destruction and injustice will win you accolades.
Not knowing in advance how this would play out is proof that these people are trying to prove their moral superiority instead of actually trying to ameliorate the lot of other people. If actual results were the aim of these actions, it would be unnecessary to gratuitously risk the loss of face and humiliation now displayed. If you want to help the maid, help the maid. If you want to teach Indian people about right and wrong, start in your own back yard and set an example that others may choose to emulate. Or fail in setting an example and realize you weren’t the first society where ideals and practice diverge.

There are of course stupid people saying “Two wrongs don’t make a right”,
but they ignore the very true reality that “Two wrongs make a lesson, that you should have fixed the problem the first time”.

This situation also underscores the very Asian traits that “you must be grateful someone employs your stupid, uneducated ass (no matter how properly qualified you are); do whatever you are told even if illegal; your employer is always right; asking for greater pay is insubordination; you cannot show yourself capable in such a way that you employer is seen as incompetent; criteria for promotion is not transparent or accessible; you cannot compare salaries with others”

I like that statement in the dailymail link: “A fully furnished one bedroom apartment in the Upper East part of New York does not come for less than $2,500!”
That would mean, for example, a person working at Google Maps for the salary of 84,000/year as a “lead developer”, would be paying $30,000 for just a place to sleep in, nevermind meals.
So much for “programmers are paid very well”, like the manosphere contributor Greenlander likes to BS (he never got back to me about which companies paid more than Google … and don’t forget they have a non-poaching clause in their job arrangements meaning you can’t easily leave to go elsewhere)

The maid didn’t get paid properly, and her bosses seem very eager to not pay her, while saying that highlighting she didn’t get paid properly is wrong.
Seems like somebody … just doesn’t want to pay properly.
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Of course, they should have paid the maid better. But that is not the real issue in this case. It is about the very selective enforcement of laws.

Why prosecute an Indian diplomat when many of her equivalents from countries in the Middle-East are doing the same thing? What about diplomats from western countries stationed in countries where the median income is low? What about all those white people who have nannies in NYC or California?

Very correct about prosecuting all of them, it seems they want to both
“keep the colonial mentality” and “keep happy the people with the oil”.
Selective enforcement is a very useful tool to keep people in suspense that they might become a target for detention and investigation.
There’s also a tangential link to feminism, “women who pay other women to take care of their kids, and lower than the minimum wage”.
Ah, there’s that female spirit of nurturing 🙂

Revisiting some of the posts during the happy holidays (!). I find the Indian diplomats at every level getting domestic help imported from home. I am not aware of many upper middle class Americans with full time domestic help, like cooks, butlers etc. In the western countries the machines that do domestic jobs, washing cleaning, running water, cars for commuting etc. Delicious food can be ordered out for a reasonable price in America. [we find ordering out much cheaper at times] Day care is easily available in many neighborhoods. Why do these low level Indian diplomats who are little more than clerks in an office think they are entitled to domestic help? Smacks of bonded labor/caste entitlement.
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Awww.. you believe that bullshit or want to believe it? Do you really think that the rich are the only ones who employ of all those hispanic maids, part-time nannies, house-cleaners, gardeners and other house help? Ever spend any time in California or other states in the SW?

Latest update (December 2014): The diplomat diva Khobragade has gotten into trouble with the Indian government as well by getting American passports to her children against foreign service regulations.

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So? Are you implying that the median white american diplomat working in a non-white country is a “better human being” than the median indian diplomat?

hoipolloi

January 1, 2015 at 10:55 am

@AD

May be this will help understand the situation. The maid in the Khobragade story is not any ordinary maid. She ostensably has CIA connection through her husband working in the American emabassey in India. She could pull some strings so to speak. That is one reason why her case is taken up by the American legal system.

“Do you really think that the rich are the only ones who employ of all those hispanic maids, part-time nannies, house-cleaners, gardeners and other house help?”

People may take part-time help in America. But full time domestic help is an exception than rule. Everybody drives their own car to work here, with limited exceptions. If someone cuts my lawn or cleans my house couple of hours a week charging me 100$/hour; that doesn’t count. Indian diplomatic clerks have full time domestic help? Again I make exception for the Ambassidor or Chief of consulates.

The video is feminism at its worst. When we go out we want to see and be seen by others. That is hard wired into the human psyche. The “seeing” that was happening in the video is discrete and appreciative. The producers of the video want to put the youngmen on a guilt trip? But why?

P Ray

January 3, 2014 at 8:45 pm

“Average” young men need to be put on a guilt trip, so that the women who slut around have a provider guy to land on when the “guys who are attractive to many women” discard the “women that chose them over an average guy”.

The politicians and “alpha males” in India will support this, in the guise of “defend women’s honour”.

Feminism is a scam so that women have plenty of sexual access and after that the chance to build a family and steal what a guy has honestly worked to earn.